This site has not been abandoned even though there hasn’t been an entry for more than a week. It’s a temporary victim of “apartment living.” A little more than a year ago the apartment complex had two things that are now no longer around. One was an in-house store; the other was a community telephone. The in-house store was open for an hour on Saturdays with a supply of bread, milk and assorted odds and ends to carry people through the weekend. The community telephone was in the lobby for anyone to use for a few minutes.

The in-house store was discontinued when the people who went to the stores to pick up a load of supplies moved away. Although the majority of the people in the place drive, there have been no volunteers to replace them, hence, no store. That might start again if volunteers materialize. Last week someone cut the cord on the telephone. Reportedly, that will not be replaced. Anyone (such as yours truly) in the habit of using it to get supplies and services is out on a limb until other arrangements can be made. Thoughts and actions are rather wildly directed to other arrangements.

It is Memorial Day. The proper things to do include the likes of going to the cemetery to clean up the gravesites, if necessary, and to take flowers as a sign of caring. The apartment building, on the other hand, is having a cookout. On the strange idea that it would be held in front of the place, there was a trip downstairs early to avoid the crowd and still get out of the place for a few minutes lest cabin fever developed. It turns out the event is going to be in the patio and community room area. That makes sense; the mind is occupied with getting a means of transportation and back up food….

Today, if people run across “Cox,” it’s probably via Cox Communications (Cox Enterprises). And, seemingly, Cox Communications isn’t a particularly “big” name. Actually, Cox has quite few holdings, but many might be termed “small stuff.” The thing with “small stuff” is, if there is a lot of it, it’s a big pile or an important undercurrent if it’s widespread. It’s rather difficult to get some grasp of yours truly’s world without a passing understanding of Cox (and Taft) and the rather staggering long-term influence (not position, but influence) of the people of southwestern Ohio on the U.S. national governmental scene.

Political junkies can come up with William Howard Taft of Cincinnati a lot easier than they can James Middleton Cox, because Taft was a U.S. President. He was also a Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court and there are Tafts living today still once in a while running for some office or another. Cox didn’t win the presidency, but there is little doubt that he had equal influence if he wanted to use it for a simple reason: Cox ran for U.S. President with Franklin Delano Roosevelt as the vice-presidential candidate. As a result for the many years that Roosevelt was in office (and still today) the backing of Cox would be seen as useful and any ideas would surely be worth considering.

James M. Cox was born after the U.S. Civil War in a small place down state from Dayton. He eventually moved to the immediate Dayton area and named his home “Trail’s End.” Although not originally a Daytonian, he is buried in Dayton. Just incidentally, he was a member of the Church of the United Brethren in Christ. The important thing with Cox, as with Taft, is that ordinary (everyday) people of the area live their lives in a world of indirect but substantial political power that sometimes is hauled out and used. They say it’s useless to argue religion and politics. In some cases arguing either can be deadly. There are biographies of Mr. Cox in various places.

Let us be done, to some fundamental extent, with any towns named by listing some identification, like presenting reasons for mention. There are three groupings for towns that are points of reference. Some are simply something like current news items or places of interest. They have no direct relationship to yours truly. Some are not something personally visited or any such thing, but they have a relationship because of someone else. Thus a cousin’s relatives on the other side living in Oklahoma might bring in a mention of that town or a friend in Arizona might bring in a mention of that town. The third group of towns are places where some actual physical time has been spent, maybe a few hours or maybe a long stay, long enough to take up some of the life of the people. There have been four of the latter.

Terre Haute is in Indiana and the reason for sitting there in the past was that entire summers were spent at the grandparents house there. Cincinnati and Dayton are both in Ohio. The main reason for time in Cincinnati was education. The federal government has a program that’s supposed to be an opportunity for people to upgrade old skills they have to meet the needs of business these days. The one in Cincinnati was presumed to be good. Dayton is home; but, the program was mis-managed in Dayton, and there was no upgrading. It turned out it was mis-managed in Cincinnati, too. Lastly, Covington is in Kentucky. Apart from an unexpected need to find another place to live, the program was available through a third group in Covington, where it likewise has been mishandled. (The government wants results for the money. and some upgrades take time. More about this some other time.)

The above is the explanation for all of the towns mentioned. Two of the foreign towns (so far) are particular because they are ancestral. They were the places from which one or the other set of grandparents migrated to the United States. The main thing to be noted about them is that when the grandparents lived there, both towns were a part of the Austrian Empire that existed before the first world war. The people migrated from Austria. At that particular time the empire carried the title Austria-Hungary. Today, Ozd’any (a hundred years ago it went by the name of Osgyan or some similar spelling) is in the newish country of Slovakia. Erdokovesd (which here is missing the dots over the “o” letters that makes it another letter of the alphabet) is in Hungary. It was just once that they were all Austrian.

Things being somewhat overwhelming presently, although there are a number of unfinished topics sort of on hold including additional apartment descriptions and more about grandma’s house (and kitchen) in Terre Haute, it’s sensible (it seems) to pause briefly to mention Dayton. There’s bound to be more mention of Dayton, and posting some things establishes the category and connection for future reference and inclusions. “The Project” that comes under discussion at times is centered in Dayton, as is a big interest, Aviation Trail.

“Dayton” can mean any one of a number of places or many people, some quite prominent and quite alive. The one here is exclusively the city in the U.S. state of Ohio. It’s not the biggest city in the state. That’s Cleveland. It’s not a most prominent city. That might be Cincinnati. It’s not the capital. That’s Columbus. It’s just one of about seven or eight (depending how it’s counted) fairly large cities in the state. In some places, in view of the population count, it would be the biggest town in the area. In Ohio, it’s rather far from the biggest. On the national scale it usually falls into the “medium-sized” range.

If there are enough people around, almost any place can trot out some notable individual, either past or present, as having been a part of the community. At times the person really is notable, and at times it’s a matter of good publicity. Dayton claims several people that have done a little something that changed the way people live, including the creation of the automobile self-starter and the pull top on modern day “tin” cans. Dayton also claims the Wright Brothers who figured out how to fly like a bird insofar as machinery can do it. (More some other time.)

Once a year there’s an official “mother’s day.” The words look different if they are not capitalized, and they seem to carry more of the meaning in at least two respects: a day set aside for mother and a time in the past relative in some way to a mother. “High school in mother’s day….” (for example) could be said by almost anyone of any age about a mother just a few years beyond the time or long after, depending on various things.

To the surprise of yours truly, the official Mother’s Day is early in the month this year. (April is still on the calendar.) A few pieces of advertising were noted, but not until people started smiling out, “Happy Mother’s Day!” in the hallway was there a clear understanding that the “day” was today. It’s important to note, because, a little like Christmas, Mother’s Day is not a day to get to chatting with someone about going shopping or any such thing.

Mother is to be especially remembered. A gift if one lives in the same house is in order. A visit and a special something, like maybe dinner in a restaurant and a trip to a theatre would be in order if one did not live in the same house. A minimal contact if one is far, far away is in order. As noted what is not in order is an outsider with a different agenda. Some times the visiting can only be to a cemetery; but, that, too, is a visit. And, if that’s not possible, the only thing left that is possible is conjuring up some memories.

There are – let’s call them – extra factors to consider in rental living in general and senior citizen living in particular. A landlord (property manager) may not delve very deeply into what a resident might want to do and is legally allowed to do, while said manager may delve very deeply into details about things the management wants the tenant to do. This varies from place to place to some extent and may or may not be covered by some law or the other. The landlord may also not be too up front about the actuality of some things openly offered either as amenities or promotional things.

Case in point: laws and rules allow for “companion animals” (pets) above and beyond the likes of the seeing eye dogs of blind individuals. Animals can easily make a mess of a place; landlords may be rather leery about the matter and some don’t mention it. If the prospective tenant doesn’t know it’s legal to have some animal around, the management sees no sense in encouraging the idea. If the matter comes up at all, a likely example is something like a small bird or maybe a cat. A dog can’t be more than twelve inches high at the shoulder (or some such thing).

People do try to house animals in their apartments. Usually (not always) there isn’t a problem for other residents with something like a house-broken cat that stays in another resident’s apartment. Dogs, on the other hand, are usually taken outside to do their business. So, what other tenants have to contend with is people running in and out of a place with a miniature something or the other attached to a lead (leash) given several yards of walking play even on the elevator. (Maybe more on this general topic another time.)

The whole housing business, which these days is precarious in various ways, is something yours truly never sorted out completely. If one is an “owner,” one either owns a place outright or carries a mortgage. (In other words, in some cases the loan company really owns it.) The “owner” can be a corporation. If it’s a relatively big apartment complex, the owner probably is a corporation. An individual owner was listed for the previous apartment complex, but it was also stated that there were really five or seven people owning it.

While poking around one day, yours truly happened upon some government figures which said there was a hefty mortgage on the other apartment complex, although it had been renovated more than two decades earlier. Possibly it was refinanced. The presumption is, the business (and it is a business) is set up on the basis of some kind of government backed loans, and it operates on other government money in the form of a good many tenant subsidies arrived at by government contract. While it’s considered private enterprise dealing with paying citizenry, there’s no comparison to owning a house outright.

Further, in order to be in on the dealing, it’s not necessary to “own” one or more buildings with a hundred or two hundred tenants. City of Covington Housing (which is subsidized housing) as is known, has sub-contracts with private landlords claiming ownership of a few rental houses (or something like duplexes) with only a few tenants. It’s all a big, cross-referenced bureaucracy involving federal, state, and city governments, private institutions such as churches and labor unions and people.